Telecommunications systems, cable television systems and data communication networks may use networks to rapidly convey large amounts of information between remote points. Traffic may arrive and leave in various parts of such a network in dynamic fashion. Furthermore, the topology of such a network may change, and failure of portions of the network may occur. The requirements of a network may be expressed using graphs. Resource-oriented dependency graphs may illustrate a network node, a resource, and a need for use of the resource by the node.